THE BOY WHO DREW SHEEP

How the apprentice Giotto fooled his painting master by drawing a lifelike fly on the nose of one of the master's portraits, how he paid his ""debt to the pigs"" for using so many of their bristles to make brushes, and how he won a commission by submitting only a circle drawn freehand as his sample work -- all recounted from Vasari's ingratiatingly embroidered biography. Via. Cennini's Craftsman's Handbook come further details on how the 13th century painter's apprentice learned his craft; these and the black and white reproductions of Giotto's works are woven into an intimate small-scale view of the world of the early Renaissance painter.